aabicus – Page 40 – The Daily SPUF

Announcing the SPUF of Legend!

February 7, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments 1000, aaby, awesome, celebration, daily spuf, medic, party, SPUF

Wow! We’ve reached the quadruple digits! Back when we started things in 2013, adapting SPUF threads into articles and relying mostly on Gen. DeGroot’s loadout thread for pictures, I had no idea we’d ever reach this far. And we didn’t just reach it, we kept new articles coming every day! Medic’s already got an article talking about how awesome this is, so my focus here is to showcase some cool new additions to our content-creating repertoire. As mentioned, we’ve created a Youtube channel, The SPUF of Legend, and my goal is to create new videos for said channel on a regular basis. I’m aiming… [Continue Reading]

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Windows in TF2

February 4, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments competitive, design, maps, TFC

No, not that Windows. I’m talking about the ones that even Mac and Linux players have to deal with. Many maps in TF2 feature glass windows, which surprisingly are something of a new feature for the TF series. Going back into Team Fortress Classic, I can’t find any examples in official maps of transparent screens allowing the user to look but not interact with further parts of the map. They were consciously included in TF2’s design, as the Gravelpit developer commentary explains: “Height is a useful feature when designing defensible buildings. For instance, the cap B building needs to be defended from… [Continue Reading]

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A Syringe Gun Update

February 3, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments economy, festive weapons, medic, request, syringes

On my birthday in 2014 we published an article talking about the lack of cosmetic love for the stock shotgun. Since then, Valve’s kicked it up a notch and actually given us both a festive shotgun and Decorated shotguns, so they’ve kinda redeemed themselves. (we really still need an Australium one though.) And that means that the Syringe Gun is now the only stock weapon that goes completely unloved by Valve’s texture artists. I can kinda understand why, since it’s an underpowered and unremarkable attempt at a self-defense weapon that every Medic ignores because at least one unlock (usually the… [Continue Reading]

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aabicus tries to CS:GO part III

February 1, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments counter-strike, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, CSGO, non-tf2

The more Counter-Strike:Global Offensive I play, the more interested I get in its version of asymmetrical multiplayer. Despite being a competitively-ranked player vs. player military shooter, it does not follow the common trope of giving both teams similar arsenals. Instead, the terrorist and counter-terrorist ordnance are differ from each other in several very distinct ways, encapsulated best by the two signature rifles of each team. Like other games, CSGO chose to differentiate these two guns primarily through emphasizing either damage or accuracy. The AK47 hits much harder than the M4A1-S but at the cost being far less accurate, a distinction that… [Continue Reading]

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Juggling weapons: the new TF2 meta?

January 29, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, glitches, weapon balance

Red Robot sparked some interesting conversations in various social medias including SPUF when he released this video, commenting on a new ‘playstyle’ he’d discovered: Using the new weapon-dropping mechanic, he had the very Counter Strike-esque idea to juggle multiple weapons of the same loadout slot and carry them through the battlefield. His first idea was to pair the Crit-a-cola with the pistol, and I can definitely see the appeal in that combo. The pistol’s a half-decent jack-of-all-trades with middling accuracy, firepower, and firing speed, so giving it a damage boost and falloff-immunity could be godly in the hands of a pro scout.… [Continue Reading]

Featured Now for Something Completely Different

Optimizing Your Panda Express Strategy

January 26, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments food, heavy, I don't know!, I have no idea!, orange chicken, panda express, scout

Everybody has a vice, and mine is Panda Express. Their orange chicken is impossibly delicious and definitely my favorite food on this planet. Thank god I move so often and never seem to be anywhere near one, otherwise I’d be eating there all the time. The Panda Express at my old college campus was a place of many memories for me. It was where I first met my future wife in a study group for Dinosaurs class. I was its mayor on FourSquare before FourSquare revamped its mayorship system and made it stupid and pointless. I was there for all… [Continue Reading]

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Landfall: The Newest CTF Map

January 23, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments ctf, maps, tough break

The new maps in Tough Break feel super generic, but they’re at least very well made. And after the oddity of themes like aliens, halloween and PASS Time, maybe its good for TF2 to take a step back and support some tried-and-true game modes with new gimmick-free maps. Nevertheless I’m surprised to find myself liking ctf_landfall as much as I do. It’s Capture the Flag after all, a legendarily poorly-designed game mode. But somehow, Landfall does a really good job of balancing the concept and avoiding perpetual stalemates. The map has a wonderful three-dimensional design with two designated layers of… [Continue Reading]

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My Favorite Gun in Various Horde Games (That Nobody Uses)

January 18, 2016February 24, 2025 aabicus 0 Comments killing floor, Left 4 Dead 2, payday

Maybe it’s just due to my desire to step outside of my comfort zone, but for some reason I often find myself gravitating toward guns that don’t fit the established meta of multiplayer games. Games like the ones on this list aren’t exactly well-known for their weapon customization and yet in each case my favorite gun turns out to be something customized in a way that makes it completely unused by the majority of players. So I thought I’d take a moment to argue a case for my favorite guns in some popular horde mode games on Steam. 1. The laser-sighted silenced… [Continue Reading]

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On Hype

January 15, 2016January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments developer, hype, On Shooters, overwatch, payday

Gamers have a love/hate relationship with hype. It fuels our soul, keeps us looking to the future and fills our minds with the tantalizing possibilities foreshadowed by either a PR Department or just the words of our online comrades. Sometimes the final product fizzles in the sun, sometimes it handles itself well enough but doesn’t meet hype, and on rare occasion it can exceed everyone’s expectations. But is too much hype a good thing? From a developer’s perspective, it makes sense to try and drum up as much excitement over a product as possible. Your goal is to get people… [Continue Reading]

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On Pre-Match Paralysis

January 14, 2016 aabicus 1 Comment criticism, idea, mechanics

The Pre-Match freeze is something that every TF2 player has experienced, something that you encounter every single match you play, and something that’s been in the game from the very beginning. And yet I think it may be one of the least-discussed facets of the game. I know I thought about making an article on it twice in the past two years and both times abandoned the notion due to lack of content. Why does it happen? When I first wondered about it, I wasn’t even sure if it was intentional. Maybe the map’s loading, or something in the background has… [Continue Reading]